NOE (31) 26.05.2021

On 26 May 2021 at about 23:00, a witness on the terrace of his home in Noé (31) observed a UAP he described as a cylindrical luminous halo, with a small cloud in its centre and a star above it. Inside the halo, on either side of the cloud, were wave-like ripples. A very bright rectangle followed the halo. The whole formation moved silently in a straight line from west to east. The investigation identified the effects of the ignition of the final stage of a Falcon 9 rocket for its deorbit manoeuvre, after launching Starlink® satellite batch 28; see the investigation report. GEIPAN finds the description of a halo and a star entirely consistent with this aerospace phenomenon, which was observed over a large area of France and Spain at very nearly the time the witness gave. It also considers the UAP's trajectory a perfect match for the rocket stage's northwest-to-southeast track, passing almost overhead to the northeast of the observation site. The bright rectangle could have been the Starlink® satellites, which had not yet spread apart. The UAP's large apparent size, distance and intense brightness contributed to the witness's sense of strangeness. The source states that underestimating its actual distance led to overestimating its size, noting that this separation and re-entry operation involving the stages of SpaceX's Falcon 9 launcher takes place above 100 km altitude. GEIPAN also considers the observation duration probably overestimated and likely to have been less than 15 minutes. The case is classified A: observation of the effects of ignition for deorbiting the Falcon 9 stage used to launch Starlink® satellite train 28. The description matches precisely another case investigated and documented by GEIPAN at the same time on the same day: Malrevers (43), 26 May 2021.